Greenwolves' Keep
by skyspireskit3
Summary: Unable to sleep, Kayley wanders back into the Forbidden Forest...and into a world of trouble.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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Kayley couldn't sleep.

She opened her eyes in the weary dark and sat up in her bed, ignoring the night chill as it bit through her thin shift. The moonlight stung her tired eyes. She sighed and tossed back her hair, looking around. The old wooden toys her father had carved for her stared back, and she heard the animals snuffling outside, the wheeling cries of the gulls and the white-noise pulse of the sea.

It amazed her, how everything was the same.

It had been three days. Three days since she had returned, with Garrett at her side and the cheering of Camelot behind her and the murderer of her father dead at last in the dust. Three days, and still she couldn't settle down. Adrenaline still hummed in her veins, smoldering in her day and night and strangling her sleep, refusing to let her back down into the dull grind of farmwork. She had tried to soothe herself, remind herself that she would be going back to Camelot someday. King Arthur had promised, but first, Camelot needed to heal, and so she had gone home. But, it was home to…what? The chores? The wandering boredom? The void in the house where her father had been?

The thought wrung her in its fist.

She ran her hands over her body, feeling every bruise, every ache she'd collected from the journey through the forest, and the struggle against Ruber. She listened hard and, in the graveyard silence of the house, she could hear Garrett snoring faintly from the guest room. But already, it was all starting to feel like a dream she had once had.

Getting up, she stepped out of bed and out of her nightdress, struggling into her clothes. A still-sore knee turned and made her stumble. The hallway floorboards that creaked were easy enough to avoid, and she took only some water, feeling again like a child sneaking out for a late-night horse ride.

Outside, the icy wind chewed through her clothes and stung her hands, moaning over the land like a lost spirit. The hills spread before her, silvered by the cloud-tattered moon. Crickets chirped feverishly. She didn't take a horse. Instead, she began walking.

Nearly an hour passed unnoticed, and Kayley vaguely remembered glimpsing the forked, gnarled sign that pointed the way to the Forbidden Forest before the forest itself was yawning before her, skeletal mist wisping through the trees like tendrils of dragon smoke. Cautiously, as if bidden by enchantment, she stepped over the slippery rocks that guarded its entrance, rocks that only a few days ago she had been running, scrabbling over in hunted fear with the shouts of Ruber's henchmen spearing at her back.

Just a step in, she decided. Just a glimpse, a taste of what had been, and she could go home. She would be back in time for the chores.

She looked back over her shoulder to the countryside, at the little farm on the highest hill. Then she let the forest swallow her up.

She stepped carefully, avoiding the lighter patches of grass that were carnivorous and could close around the ankle like a hunter's trap. Hungry mud sucked at her boots. The bark of the trees quivered at her touch like living flesh. Awe rekindled in her, eclipsing any thoughts of home.

A rustle in the foliage. She froze.

Nothing. Feeling as though she had snapped out of a trance, saw the cage of trees around her and realized what she was doing, how far she had gone. Sense took over, and reluctantly she began to retreat.

Something burst from the bushes and tore past her, and for a fear-blind moment she thought it was a ripple of the forest floor itself, a mirage's shimmer, before her eyes sketched its shape and she saw it was a wolf, its fur mottled in shades of luxuriant green and dusky earth so that it was barely discernable from the woodlands around it. She had seen such a creature before on her previous adventure, a pack of them, but then it had been only the fireflies of their eyes as they circled outside the camp she shared with Garrett. As the wolf disappeared into the trees, she looked at the ground and saw the trail of blood it had left on the grass.

An inhuman shriek rent the air, raising the hair on her neck and chasing itself in ringing echoes through the woods. Adrenaline sparked recklessly and she hesitated only a moment before she ran toward it.

Getting closer, Kayley heard the sounds of a scuffle, tearing dirt and snapping teeth. She ducked behind a tree and gaped at the sight of a pack of the forest wolves as they swarmed together over something in a jade bushfire of fur and bodies, their chorusing snarls sawing through the undergrowth. Another screech sounded, and blood spattered the rocks as one wolf was suddenly sent flying, its body striking a tree with a savage crack and crumpling to the base, still.

A second wolf relinquished its hold and limped back, its chest gashed and streaming, and Kayley's mouth went dry as from the fray reared a huge, ebony head like that of an eagle, giant bat-like ears laid back from a curved scimitar of a beak, green eyes blazing. A griffin.

Ruber's griffin.

Another slash of the griffin's claws and three more wolves were sent sprawling. At that, the pack broke, darting away into the forest like storm-scattered leaves, vanishing among the grasses.

The griffin lay they left it, its sides heaving, the mud around it churned with blood. The sandy fur of its hindquarters and ragged patches of its feathers were charred away, the naked skin ravaged with furious dark burns. Its great wings were crumpled and blackened like the branches of a fire-stripped tree, one ear torn nearly in two. As Kayley watched (she remembered Cornwall smirking, "Fried chicken for everybody!" when she'd asked what had become of Ruber's pet), its filmy eyes rolled in its head until they landed on her.

Looking right at her.

Kayley shrank against the bark, not daring to look away. Then, after a long minute, she stepped out from behind the tree.

At her approach, the griffin growled and bristled in warning. Kayley stopped. Even from where she stood she could feel the coiled power of it like heat from a wildfire. Her heart was stuttering, but she kept her voice steady. "Easy. It's okay."

Keeping a safe distance, she knelt into a crouch, trying to make herself as unthreatening as possible. The griffin eyed her balefully and snapped at her, a beak that could devour a man in a man in three bites. The burns on its flesh seemed to seethe in the dim light.

Kayley felt ill. She owed this monster nothing. But her father's voice tolled in her memory: _"A true knight shows compassion."_ And, despite everything, some part of her, the child that had soaked up fairy tales and all the legends of mystical beasts, ached to see such a magnificent, powerful creature brought so low.

Slowly, Kayley reached into her pouch and pulled out the flask of water she had brought. "Easy," she murmured again, and uncorked the flask to hold it out, ready to retract her arm at the first hint of danger.

The griffin flinched at the movement as if from a blow. Kayley was startled, but she tilted the flask so that it dripped its contents onto the griffin's beak. His parched tongue darted out and lapped it up, but she held the flask back before he could get more. Steeling herself against the pain-dulled eyes boring into hers, Kayley spoke firmly, as if she dealt with monsters on a weekly basis, "Listen to me. There's a place here in the forest that can heal you. I can take you there, but in return, you're going to swear to me that as long as you live you will never come near my home, my family, or Camelot ever again. Do you understand?"

The griffin gave her a resigned look, as if it were used to this sort of torment and expected nothing less. It opened its beak, but all it could make was a rasp. Kayley hated herself, but she waited until it managed to croak a "Yes."

Kayley tripped the rest of the water into the griffin's mouth, its throat rippling greedily as it drank. When the flask was dry and Kayley stood and looked ahead into the forest, took a shaky breath and asked, "Can you walk?"

The griffin made a sound like a "hmph," and after two attempts staggered to its feet, putting Kayley in mind of an ancient ship rising from an underwater grave, all creaking timbers and rotted, ghostly resolve. She motioned for him to follow her.

This wasn't the way she had gone with Garrett, but she hoped that by going forward she would eventually come to something familiar. The griffin lumbered behind her, limping, his heavy breathing painful. The forest stretched ahead, alien and bleak. Clusters of eyes glowed from the shadows, watching.

A peal of thunder rolled overhead and rain dripped down through the dense treetops like sap, growing to a deluge. Kayley shielded her head with her arm and spotted a rough cave, its entrance cobwebbed with the overhanging roots of a dead tree. Kayley let the griffin go in first; he settled his injured body down, too tired even to shake the wet from his ears, and pity twisted deeper in Kayley's gut. While he drank from a pool of leaked rainwater, she found some thick, strange moss growing on the rocks of the cave. She touched it gingerly, and when it didn't bite or burn she scraped off a handful and dipped it into a puddle at the cave's mouth. The griffin laid back its ears as she approached.

"It's okay..." Murmuring some soothing nonsense, she touched the damp moss gently to one of his wounds. He jerked and hissed, deadly beak snapping an inch from her shoulder, and she jumped back. "Hey, hey," she said. "I just—"

He hissed at her. She put her hands on her hips, hoping it would transform her into a pillar of authority as it did for her mother. "Those are going to get infected."

He glared at her, but she stood firm, unflinching, until her own eyes began to water, and when no attack came she tried again. He flinched, as if he'd suddenly forgotten he could snap her like a twig. The abrupt turn made Kayley blink. "What kind of behavior is that for a griffin?" she said sternly.

He growled but didn't bite her and she supposed, for all his stubbornness, he knew he needed her. Very gently, she touched the cool moss to his hide, wiping away the thick-caked grit and blood. She felt the huge body quiver as she worked, felt the restrained might in its bulk, but she didn't pull away and neither did he.

After a long time, when the walls were all but bare of moss and her hands were stiff and itchy with dried blood, she'd done all she could and moved away to find a dry place. She listened to the harsh rustling of his burnt feathers as he tried in vain to get comfortable, and saw one of his fierce green eyes close while the other stayed open, fixed on her, burning like a live coal.

She didn't sleep. It was cold, and the griffin growled through his dreams, the sounds lancing off the rock walls all night.


	2. Chapter 2

Kayley jerked her head up with a painful crack, startled from a fuzzy half-doze. The cave was flooded with early sunlight and she saw the walls were already furred with a new growth of moss. She knuckled her eyes clear and looked for the griffin. He lay chomping on a wad of the spongy moss, and when there was no more nourishment left he spat it to the side and stiffly flexed his desiccated wings. Kayley ducked out through the curtaining roots.

Pale dawn misted the forest, the air cloying with the fresh scent of rain. Its beauty salved her and she stretched, then looked at the ground beneath her feet and saw the mud at the cave's mouth was pockparked with pawprints. But the bushes were still, no glimpses of green fur rustling through them now.

A gust of breath scorched her back and she jumped, whirling to see the griffin right behind her, grimly expectant. In the sunlight, the devastation of his body was clear to see, ugly scabs paved over cobblestone blisters and burn-eaten flesh. Kayley marveled that infection hadn't yet clawed into the wounds, and the only explanation she could conjure was the forest, its magic somehow at work.

"Well?" he rasped, in a voice like scales against coals.

"Oh, right." She looked into the forest again. The dizzying thickness of the trees assailed her, offering nothing familiar. She wished she had Garrett with her, Garrett who knew every danger and oddity of the forest so well that it was like a living entity he could bend to his will. She hadn't even thought to go back for help.

_No_. _I can do this._

Above, the columns of trees molded over them to create ornate ceilings of woven light and emerald, grander than any design man could conceive, and Kayley felt its majesty threatening to overwhelm her, snare her mind like an insect in sap, but the presence of the agonized creature behind her kept her grounded. His gaze drilling into her back knotted her with unease and she had to struggle to keep her step from quickening.

The griffin walked with his good ear lifted, twitching at every snatch of sound. Curiosity loosened her tongue. "What do you hear?"

"The forest," he said.

_I know that,_ she bit off the retort with difficulty. "What does it say?"

A sideways look. "You have ears of your own, don't you?"

"But-" She gave up.

Before long, the dry stink of sulfur crept into Kayley's nostrils. The towering trees gave way to blackened, tombstone stumps. Further ahead she could see the rising fumes, the yellowed wasteland of dragon territory. She hesitated; she remembered this place well.

She wished for Cornwall and Devon. They knew the hiding places, the secret tunnels that wormed beneath the desert.

No. Too late for wishful thinking. She looked to the griffin. "Show me the way you came through here with Ruber."

The griffin looked askance at her, eyes slitted with the knowledge that he had been born for better things than leading some foolish girl through a death valley.

"Come on," she said. "Come _on_."

He came.

Eventually the gases thinned enough to see through, and the gargoyle-like rocks and scant, charcoal vegetation of dragon territory came into view. The ground was cracked and peeled as sunburned flesh. The plants disintegrated with a cough at the touch, and huge bones littered the dust-dry earth like fallen blades on a battlefield. Kayley tried to listen over her own nervous heartbeat for the warning rumble of a dragon, the flap of wings. But there was none. A plague of silence wrapped the wasteland, and something about it made her move nearer to her taloned companion, and the fur to bristle along his shoulders.

Soon they came upon a cluster of eggs, each one large as a boulder, carelessly scattered in their path. The griffin pierced the shell of one with his beak and plunged his head into its steaming insides, eating voraciously. The sight turned Kayley's stomach and she had to look away, scouting for a tunnel.

There.

The griffin wrenched his head free from the shell, his skullfeathers plastered thickly with slime. His tall ears stood up and he hissed at the sky. Kayley wasn't sure what he heard, but knew that was their cue to escape.

The warren was cramped and rocky from disuse, and the griffin grunted as he squeezed his bulk through behind her. Kayley winced, thinking of his wounds scraping against dirt and sharp rock. The stink of the yolk on his feathers musted the claustrophobic space and she pulled her shirt up over her nose to filter her breathing.

These warrens had been made by the small, purple-scaled dragons native to the land, too small for the larger black ones, who were said to have come from beyond the sea, to fit down into. For now they would be safe.

Kayley's heart hit the roof of her mouth as, up ahead, there came a clatter of rock and a single, marsh-tinted eye blinked open in the murk. She backpedaled until her back was against the griffin's foreleg, the muscle beneath his coat taut for a fight, when a reedy voice spoke.

"Who's there? And don't try buttering me with riddles. I've heard it all before."

"Oh." Kayley swallowed her panic and tried to speak politely. "Um, we're sorry to intrude, but there are dragons, and—"

She jumped back, the griffin startling behind her, as the long neck and triangular head of a female dragon unfurled from the dark. It was so heavily floured in the ashy dust that its color was difficult to discern, but it was small enough to be a native. Kayley swayed with relief. The purples were gifted with speech and an intelligence the foreign ones did not share, and perhaps she could reason with it.

One of the dragon's (dragoness'?) eyes was blind as a pearl, the brow split by a scar, and she turned her head to regard them with her good one. "You haven't seen my boys around, have you? Afraid I don't see much of anything these days."

"Uh…" Behind her the griffin was growling, and Kayley remembered he smelled of dragon's egg yolk. Her tongue tripped nervously. "No, I…what are their names?"

"Can't say I remember. They say after the first millennium the mind starts to go, but ah well, never did me much good anyway…"

"…Devon and Cornwall?"

"That's them. If you've seen one, you've seen them both, as they have a slight condition, but I suppose that's what happens when—"

"Yes! I've met them. They've left the forest, they're at…"

She trailed off, wary of disclosing the location of her home to a dragon, but the female didn't seem to notice. "Ah! I was starting to think the ogre had gotten them, as it took my poor Yorik."

The skeleton outside the ogre's cavern. Uncle Yorik. "Are you… their aunt?"

"That would be me. Kubi's the name, if anyone's interested, not that they are." She shook dirt from her head and wheezed sparks. "Been down here so long I've become part of the scenery."

Kayley had to ask, ignoring the vibration against her shirt from her companion's impatient growl. "Where have all the other dragons gone?"

Kubi scoffed, settling her dusty wings. "I don't know. I don't concern myself with the affairs of egg-eaters," she spat the word like a curse, "And neither should you." She averted her face, the remnants of her mind apparently crumbling back into some ravine of the past. "Damn pug-nosed devils, coming here and eating us all out of nest and home…" She turned back around. "Though they say the wolves have been talking, about something or other, maybe that's got something to do with it. Not prone to gossip are the wolves. When they talk, it's best to cast an ear."

Kayley asked, "Will you tell us the way out? Please?"

"Well," Kubi craned her head around, looking into the tunnel that stretched behind her. "The quickest way out of here would be the one I'm sitting in."

"Will you move?"

"No. You're going to have to go around me. The second-quickest way would be the tunnel to your left. Pity my boys aren't here, they'd help you along."

Kayley beckoned to the griffin, then paused and looked back at Kubi. "Won't they cast you out? For helping a human?"

Kubi huffed. "I've incurred banishment and worse a hundred times over. I do as I wish and there's not a thing those damned droolers can do about it."

"They could kill you," Kayley said.

"Huh." Kubi spoke flippantly, but in her narrowed eye some ancient flame glinted. "They can try."

They left Kubi behind, and Kayley waited until they were out and she'd gulped her first breath of fresh air before she turned to the griffin. "You don't like dragons much, do you?"

He glared at her. "What do you think _did_ this to me?"

"Oh. Er, right."

000

They'd gone a little further when Kayley noticed the griffin's breathing growing heavier and his pace beginning to suffer, so she brought them to a halt.

He settled down to rest beneath the trees' shade and she decided to go off and look for some food for herself. "I'll be back."

A minute of walking and she came upon a rough structure like a shack, squatting in a clearing in the trees. People? Out here? Had she found more hermits, like Garrett? Kayley crept closer to the shapeless door. "Hello?"

Dust clogged the shafts of sun that bled in, falling over the filthy, rubble-strewn floor. Cobwebs raked at her hair as she stepped inside. The floor was bare dirt, marred by the tracks of animals. Curled against the far wall was a vaguely human shape, blanketed in rags, and Kayley stepped carefully over the litter toward it.

She gasped.

A skull, its lips rotted away into a death rictus, gaped eyelessly up at her. Tendrils of hair still threaded from it, sparking pure garnet in the sun. Entwined in its fleshless arms was the pale, tiny skeleton of a baby. Horror melted into sorrow, and she reached to touch it. The bird-perfect bones split like a husk beneath her fingers.

Kayley fled.


	3. Chapter 3

Trudging back to the griffin's resting place, Kayley tried to straighten her back as if nothing had happened, and he looked at her oddly but said nothing. Once more, by sheer determination, he got to his feet and followed her.

There were no paths in the Forbidden Forest; over the decades it had resisted every attempt made by man to excavate it, to harvest its magic, beasts, and vegetation, becoming a lone stronghold as the wilderness around it was eaten away by farming. Not having a knife, Kayley took a sharp rock and tried to carve a mark into the bark of a tree as a means of mapping her way back, but the trunk shuddered as if in pain and the wound crusted over instantly with thick, waxy sap.

Kayley stepped back from it, mystified, and noticed the griffin glowering at her. Seeing her reflection in those serpent orbs, she suddenly herself as he saw her: thoughtless, uncaring of the world around her, and with a potential for untold cruelty. It dashed the breath from her lungs.

"I can see," she said slowly, "I'm going to have to work to earn your trust."

"Not likely, human."

She didn't have to take this. "I have a _name_, you know."

"You assume that I care."

This wasn't the same creature, Kayley thought, who she had overheard outside her home days before, whispering to Ruber of a failed mission. Then, he'd been meek and obsequious as a beaten dog, using flowery praise and a lowered head to placate the volcano of his master's temper. The one before her now was bold and direct in his opinions as an arrow hitting home, his mask of servitude cast aside.

She told herself it was a good thing, because she couldn't have stood being equated in any way to Ruber. She _couldn't_.

In an effort to be nonchalant –she should have known better– she trailed her hand along the globular buds that ornamented the foliage above her. At the touch of her fingers, they shriveled and vomited their contents, raining their slippery, bloodrich nectar onto her. She gagged and wiped her face furiously, trying to shake it off her hands, but it clung like raw syrup. From the corner of her eye she saw the griffin's beak twitch with a smile. He was_enjoying_ this.

She composed herself. The griffin was only a mistreated animal, lashing out. If she were to be any kind of knight, she must have strength and compassion, as her father had taught her.

"Hey," she said. "I won't let you down. I promise."

He snorted and turned his head away.

Exasperation smoldered into anger. "You know, after stealing Excalibur and nearly bringing all of Camelot to ruin, you could at least meet me halfway here."

Green eyes impaled her. The hair rose on her neck, but she glared back.

"I was only doing," he said at last, "as my master ordered."

"If you hated him so much, why didn't you just tear him to shreds?" She couldn't deny a sick pleasure at the thought.

The griffin's eyes tightened. "My master," he said slowly, "was not like any other man."

Kayley opened her mouth, then remembered the night when Ruber had broken down her door, swinging at him with a spiked mace that she could barely lift and how he had caught it in his naked palm, his mad eyes betraying no pain at all.

She said nothing more.

They continued on through the labyrinth of the woods, stopping at a meager stream. She cupped her hands into the water to drink while he lapped beside her, silent.

After the sun passed its torch to the moon and fat snakes of mist began to wind through the trees, she sat as close to his warmth as she dared and stared at the stars, listening to the concert of the nightlife; the choir of the wolves' odd, bird-like cries.

She was already loosing track of time, but she knew it hadn't taken this long to traverse the forest when she had had Garrett at her side. She wondered how he was doing.

She felt a keen stitch of guilt, suddenly, for having left him alone in the alien territory of her home. For skipping off without a word to anyone. She hoped they weren't too worried.

To keep her mind off of that, she let it wander elsewhere. Old Kubi's words had sparked memories from her childhood, memories of weather-whipped travelers who had stopped at her home with only stories to offer in exchange for meals; her eight-year-old self listening rapt as their gruff voices wove the red firelight into the blood of battles and roads of quest, when an epidemic of war had razed the land and the sky had turned black with invading dragons, and she would nod off with the images spilling over into her dreams.

Some said that, during the great wars, the native talking dragons had risen up and, despite their lesser strength and statures, had beaten back the dark intruders, while other, more sensible accounts hinted at something else: plague. Struck by illnesses to which they had no immunity, the black dragons had fallen from the sky like swatted flies, their monstrous, disease-blistered corpses left to rot in the battlefield sun.

Something, a distant swish like the fall of an executioner's axe, cut Kayley from the thin sleep she had been sliding into. The griffin awoke and raised his head, looking up in flat-eared trepidation. Kayley followed the aim of his gaze and felt the blood drain from her face.

Dragons. Dark as stormclouds against the moon, circling overhead.

Icy panic crystallized in her breast. Unconsciously, she shrank closer to her companion, his muscles flexing as if straining against a chain.

"I thought dragons didn't leave their territory," she whispered. "That's what Garrett told me."

Together they melted back into the copse.

The forest floor was choked in vapors, like walking into a bank of clouds. Kayley could scarcely see a foot in front of her (_How does Garrett_do_this?_), and she held on to the crackling of leaves beneath the griffin's paws at her side, paranoia sparking from every scratch of sound.

A twig snapped.

And Kayley saw a pair of orange eyes. Burning through the darkness. At _her_.

_Oh-_

It struck like a cobra; she felt the lurch of her insides as she was swept off the ground, trapped between stalactites of fangs, her sight swallowed by the dark of a steaming throat before she realized what was happening.

Clutching Kayley in its jaws, the dragon coiled to push off from the ground, and the griffin pounced, talons hooking into the tough hide, beak crunching down on the thin bone of a wing. A storm of dust whipped up, misted green with the dragon's blood as it bucked wildly under the griffin's hold, blunt head twisting and snorting flame from its nostrils, scorching its own wings in its frenzy. Kayley was a cloth doll in its maw, her head jerking wildly on her neck, but it never loosened its grip on her.

The griffin released the ruined wing and stabbed his beak into its back below the neckbone.

The sickening crack of the dragon's spine rent the air, and the jaws holding Kayley fell nervelessly open. She hit the dirt with a burst of pain to her ribs, sat up and knuckled the grit from her eyes. The black dragon stood stock-still, its mouth opened in a cry of pain beyond sound, the griffin still latched onto it like a leech, flanks quivering and breath snorting even as his beak remained embedded, eyes hot with battle. His beak ripped free and the dragon collapsed into a boneless heap.

Before it could gather its voice again, the griffin pinned it with a taloned paw to its throat, snarling in its face, _"Why has he sent you?"_

Winded, Kayley could only watch.

The dragon gurgled faintly, something the griffin seemed to understand, his face clenching asd he lifted his paw from the scaled throat only to bring it scything down, half-severing the dragon's head from its geysering neck.

Shaken, Kayley got to her feet. She touched her shirt, felt the wetness of blood where the fangs had pierced her, but the cuts were shallow. It hadn't wanted to harm her. The griffin stood over the corpse, trembling faintly with exhaustion. With one slash of his beak, he laid the reptilian belly open and began to feed.

Kayley took the blade of rock she had gathered before and ventured closer. The griffin didn't growl at her, too absorbed in his own hunger, and she cut herself a slice of meat from the dragon's slashed throat.

She stared at the meat in her hands, tough and stringy and dripping with poison green blood. She looked to the griffin. His appetite now restrained, he took small, almost dainty bites, his table manners better than those of most people she had known. "What did it tell you?" she asked.

He swallowed before replying. "Nothing that concerns you."

"If it holds any threat to the safety of my home, of my people, then yes, it does."

He sighed. "Take me to the spring you spoke of, and I'll tell you."

"No." The meat squelched in her clenched fist. "We're not going anywhere until you tell me."

The griffin gazed at her for a moment, then looked away again. "Do as you please."

She stood where she was. Stared at his wounds, his coat damp where some had reopened in the fight, fresh blood shining on the dark scabs like new magma over old.

Whatever his intentions, he had just saved her life.

It was the only way. "Okay."

"Hm?"

"I said _okay_."

"Are you planning to eat that?"

Kayley looked to the forgotten piece of flesh, its drying juices streaking her arm to the elbow. "Oh."

She made the smallest fire that she could for herself, (as Garrett had showed her, tapping the twigs to verify if they were the ones that could decide they didn't wish to be burnt) but the meat was so tough she could barely saw her teeth through it and, despite her hunger, only managed a few bites. The rest she tossed to the griffin, and he freed his head from the carcass to snap it out of the air. (A guilty secret of his: after so many years of subsiding on human leftovers, he preferred his meat cooked.)

Then he stood still while she tore a strip from the hem of her shirt and wet it to dab some of the grime from his wounds. "Thank you," she murmured.

No answer.

"Did you hear me?"

He swallowed. "My mouth was full."

Maybe it was her eyes, the lack of sleep catching up to her, but the woods around them shimmered in disquiet, as if sensing its own existence in peril.

Take the griffin to the spring, and go home. It had seemed so _simple_.


	4. Chapter 4

Back at the farm, Juliana pocketed her hands against the breeze as she wandered the grounds, searching for her daughter.

Her reckless, irrepressible daughter, grown wild on games of heroics that had blossomed instead of withering over time, sneaking from the house since her gap-toothed years and turning up again dark with soil and windburn, prattling about imagined adventures or demanding to make their home a sanctuary for this broken-winged bird or even a fox she had freed from a trap, oblivious to the panic her absence had raised.

Kayley was a child no longer, able to fend for herself. Still, reason and motherly fear clashed. Wounds from the past days' uncertainty and dread bled afresh, and resentment brewed. Hadn't they all suffered enough excitement? Hadn't the tumultuous Hell of the past week been enough to assuage a young woman's blind thirst for thrill?

But she was bone-certain that, as long as Garrett was there, Kayley would return.

At first, she had found the young hermit disconcerting. The blankness of his stare, his eyes the flat gray of water-polished stones. But his easy charm, his earnest smile had soon wrested any reservations from her. She thought she could even see how he had snared Kayley's erratic heart.

He was also an enormous help around the farm. She had been apprehensive, but he had settled with surprising ease into the tasks, working out in no time where everything was kept, how the general machinery of the farm ran, often outstripping the hired help in efficiency. When the chores were done she would sit with him and listen to his stories of his life in the wild, of his falcon Ayden, how his path had come to cross with Kayley's and their journey together (which she had heard all from Kayley, but it was enlightening to hear another side of it), and also of his early life in Camelot, the loss of his parents at an early age, and the time he had spent with her husband.

The two-headed dragon, Cornwall and Devon, had been another story. Though Devon had assured her that both he and his brother were the strictest of vegetarians (well, omnivores, anyway) and no threat to her livestock, and they seemed pleasant enough, a lifetime of monitoring the skies for the threat of snatched sheep and worse could not be erased by a single pleasant acquaintance. Still, somehow they too had wormed their way into her good graces, and so they stayed.

The conjoined brothers in question were lazing behind the barn, munching on melons and idly spitting the seeds at chickens, when Garrett roused them with the news of Kayley's disappearance.

Cornwall showed little surprise. "You really outghta keep a better watch on her, lover boy."

"Really, Cornwall," Devon interjected, forcing their shared body up. "You could be a little more concerned."

"Hey, this is Kayley we're talkin' about. She ain't exactly helpless. What, you think she got carried off by a giant eagle or somethin'?"

Garret sighed with impatience. "Will two you get a move on? We need every pair of eyes we can get."

The dragons took flight, calling for Kayley and sporadically having to catch themselves from plummeting to the ground as they squabbled over directions.

000

The griffin went down at midday.

For the past half-mile he had begun to slow, his breathing growing sandpapered and his head hanging lower to the ground. Kayley had her own problems, her empty stomach gnawing like a parasite on her spine and her view of the landscape becoming a sickly blur, but she had led him on with coaxing words that scraped her throat, all the while trying to quell her own anxiety and hoping he wouldn't sense it, but it was difficult when every sound made her stiffen and snap her head around.

He was strong, he had made it thus far. He had even dragged the masticated carcass of the dragon with them so that when they passed through the enclosure of whorled thorns where Excalibur had been lost, he carried its disemboweled remains over himself like a cloak with Kayley pressed close underneath it so that, to the dim-eyed predators camouflaged among the trunks, it appeared to be a dragon that was entering and they shrank back from fear of fire. She had even begun to think his injuries weren't as bad as they appeared, that the rest of the journey would be easy.

They had left the corpse for the wolves and she had forgotten herself and begun to hurry ahead, when he collapsed behind her.

The impact of his body sent a tremor through the ground into her feet, toppling onto his side into one of the ogre's cratered tracks, where he lay still and gasping as though he had been crushed under its footfall.

Kayley rushed to him, pleading with him to get up. He didn't respond, and her panic grew. The film of ice he had been treading on was finally broken, and as she had bound herself to him, she would fall with him.

She couldn't keep from thinking of Garrett, watching helplessly as he had nearly slipped away from her.

For a while she stayed beside him, wrestling her frayed thoughts into a rational order, until they solidified into an alarming solution. She was hesitant, but she wouldn't it let it end this way. Such a large life would not slip through her fingers.

She went to gather some dry twigs, carefully tapping each one to verify if it wasn't a twig at all. All the while keeping low and watching the sun in fear of seeing it eclipsed by vast, scaly wings and flame-frothing jaws.

Further hunting earned her a stick, weighty and long, and she slid it beneath the felled griffin's haunch, forcing her full weight on the wood until, prying the heavy thigh prying an inch off the ground so she could slide the twigs underneath it. She watched his labored breathing scattering the dirt. Then she lit the sticks on fire.

The stench of burning hair drifted to his nostrils before he felt the heat. His eyes snapped open and with a hoarse bellow he flailed, claws ripping furrows in the dirt as he struggled to get to his feet. Finally he lurched upright, eyes wild and snapping, his haunch shedding smoke. He whirled on her.

She faced him, fighting every instinct to flee.

"Are you going to kill me now?" She wasn't afraid. Utterly, mindlessly fearless as only one looking death in the face could be. She hefted the large stick and brandished it like a spear.

He stepped toward her. She stepped back, grounding herself. Ready to fight.

And he walked right past her.

His scabbed flesh abraded her skin as he brushed by, nearly knocking her down. Choked with surprise, for a minute she could only stare after as he limped away. "Where are you going?"

He answered with a jerk of his head to some indiscernible spot on the horizon. This time, she ran after him.

Later, when she asked him how he had seen it from such a distance, he loftily replied, "I daresay my eyesight is superior to yours."

The cave.

They ducked into the shade of it, and Kayley stood and stared. The mauve-blue leaves sprouting from fissures in the rock. The walls intricately sculpted in snailshell-swirls and patterns, too fine to have been marked by natural erosion. Moss blanketing everything like freshly-fallen snow. The swampy atmosphere itself felt healing, and already some of the weakness was melting from Kayley's body. She filled her lungs gratefully with the sweet air before bending to harvest the leaves.

Gingerly, the griffin he eased his huge, exhausted body into the cool water, which immediately clouded dark with the filth and blood from his pelt.

By way of a bridge of roots, Kayley crossed onto a tiny island that nested in the pool's center, where she slumped down onto the moss carpet while the griffin paddled in circles, only his great black head above the surface. In the perfect clarity of the water she saw her own face reflected, her tousled hair reddened with the dried nectar, eyes sunken and lips cracked by thirst and wind. Pushing herself back up, she went to the small waterfall, where she stripped off her clothing and stood beneath its cascade. The clinging scarlet fell away in flakes under the combing of her nails. She would have liked to wash her clothes as well, but they were all she had and she would freeze waiting for them to dry.

The griffin appeared when she finished dressing, and she wondered if he had been allowing her the privacy. They rested in a cave that lurked behind the waterfall, where he lay down and allowed her to treat his wounds, the falls a cool shroud of sound around them.

The leaves felt downy, fragile as moth wings in her clumsy, callus-leathered hands. They dissolved on contact with the heat of his skin. He slept through the process and, emboldened, she let her hands wander along his body, beneath his bronze fur and the velvet barbs of his raven-like feathers. There she found a crude latticework of scar tissue, some smooth to her touch, others deep and ragged, and as she traced them she could imagine them fresh and bloody, the flesh laid open like fresh cuts of beef.

It was truly beyond her, how anyone could show such cruelty to something so beautiful.

Her wet hair was like melted ice down her back, increasing the shivers that racked her. She edged closer to the sleeping griffin and tentatively, trying not to wake him, let her body rest against his side. His hide rippled in displeasure and she jumped back to see him scowling at her.

She took a breath. "Sorry. May I…please?" The word clattered awkwardly from her tongue, not one she used often. She just wanted to sleep. That was all.

For a time he looked at her, the only sound the rush of the water. Then he lay gave a grudging nod before lying back. She curled against him and was enveloped in the hearth of his warmth.

000

Kayley awoke to the shock of icy rock against her cheek, and bolted up groggily to find the cave empty and flooded with watery sunlight. Outside, the gray morning seemed fragile as an illusion, the leaves jeweled with dew. A midge-haze of forked leaves flew like dragonflies, and she batted mildly at them as she swung her legs over the edge of the cave's mouth and dropped lithely onto the wide root below. The itch of fatigue still clung to her eyes and she ached from sleeping on stone. Stress had weakened her appetite, but she knew she had to eat.

There were bushes ornamented with a kind of knobby fruit and, after finding none of the telltales of poison she had learned from Garrett, she sank her teeth into it. It was dry and viciously sour, but all the same it awakened her hunger and she barely puckered as she wolfed it down.

Chewing, she went to the pool. In the rising sun its surface was eye-slittingly bright, and shattered as the griffin burst out up onto the land. She ducked to avoid the hail of droplets from his fur as he shook himself dry. His wounds were shadows of what they had been and his pelt, though still patchy in places, was already back to something of its former glory.

He spoke before she could. "My master… is truly dead, isn't he?"

"Um." She spat out a chunk of fruit. "Yes. I saw it myself. There was a flash, and…all that was left was a piece of his armor."

The griffin exhaled deeply, broad shoulders slumping as if a great weight had been cast from them. Kayley felt a pang of empathy.

From far off, she heard the call of a dragon. It shook her to the marrow.

"Griffin, what's going on in the forest? With the dragons?"

"He's looking for her."

Kayley steeled herself. "Tell me everything."


	5. Chapter 5

The griffin sighed as he began the onerous task of storytelling. "Before your time, when the humans were without a leader and running in headless-chicken circles, my pride and I looked up one morning and we could not see the sun, the sky was so filled with black dragons. None of us had ever seen such creatures; for all their might they allowed themselves to be leashed by men. Men who had come from over the seas, following the scent of war and unrest. But scarcely had the invaders set foot on the shores when their dragons were struck down by the spotted sickness. Without them, the men had no hope, and so they fled here, where they slowly died. Now, only their king remains, festering in his own madness. A few of his dragons survived the sickness and they have bred back to something of their original number, but they've remained inert, up until now."

"I knew that," said Kayley, which was only half-true. Such stories had been the crutch of her childhood, but she had never known exactly who had been responsible for the plague of exotic dragons that had all but wiped out the native purples. "Why are the dragons moving now?"

"The mad king had spawn of his own, a son and a daughter, whom he hoped would finish the job he had begun. The son rejected his father's methods and attempted to destroy Camelot from within, but because he possessed all the brains of a pigeon, he failed. The daughter fled, and the dragons are hunting for her now."

"That's all they're doing? Trying to find one girl?" Hope fluttered in her chest like a wounded bird. "Will this end once he's found her?"

"Perhaps he wishes only to see his loving daughter once again," the griffin's voice was tarred with sarcasm, "but more likely he has something terrible in the works, something he wishes to shield her from. With his only son dead, maybe he will destroy this land entirely. He never took well to losing."

Kayley couldn't feel the ground below her feet. "You're…joking."

"Believe what you will."

"How… how do you know so much of this, anyway? Don't tell me you learned it all from that one dragon." Vaguely, she wondered how old he was; far older than she, surely, but to a griffin he was still very young, barely an adult.

The griffin's face darkened. "It was the mad king's son who shackled me."

"…Ruber? Ruber's _father?_"

"Precisely."

A gray sluggishness muffled the world, like rainwater blurring the colors of a canvass. The cheerful trilling of the birds, the brightness of the sunlight, seemed surreal and dreamlike. Far away.

Automatic."I-I have to get to Camelot. Warn Arthur."

He looked away from her. "Typical human. Selfish."

"What?"

"Nevermind. How far do you think you'd get before they snatched you up?"

"Snatch me…? Why? And why didn't that one kill me earlier?"

"They think _you're_ the woman they seek."

"_What?"_

"They know there's a woman in the forest in the company of a griffin. His _late_" (his tongue curled in relish around the word) "son's griffin. It fits the profile."

"How does he know?"

The griffin shrugged his huge shoulders. "The wolves. The birds. The forest talks."

Anger twisted her. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

She leapt backwards as his face thrust right in hers, the blazing green of his eyes threatening to burn out her vision, snarling, "Oh yes, I _shiver_ in anticipation of watching the world burn before me."

He turned his back on her.

_Garrett. Mother._ Everything in her pulled back towards home, but it would take too long, and to get back she would have to travel through Dragon Country once more, and surely she would be spotted. Camelot was near, only a few more miles. There was a chance. She had to get to King Arthur. He would know what to do.

There was only one way: forward.

The griffin stoically watched her go.

Beyond the spring an open plain stretched like the sea's choppy surface, murky with mist and pitted with the footprints of the ogre. With Garrett at her side, in the relief of evaded tragedy, it had all seemed inviting; a new beginning, another chance. Now she saw only danger, offering no cover.

She took off across the plain. Halfway across, a vibration shook the earth through her soles, nearly throwing her from her feet. Familiarity at the sensation stuttered her heart.

The ogre.

Her head whipped around and she put on speed until her lungs burned. The mist swallowed her vision from all sides, baffling her senses, and without sound or sight an instinctive panic brewed. She looked down and between gaps in the mist saw the ground blackened with sweeping shadows.

She threw herself onto her stomach just as the draft of a dragon's lunge scythed over her. Pain burst across her back, followed by the sickening wetness of blood. Disoriented, choking on dust, unsure if what caked her face was hard was dirt or blood. The ground shook, and shook again, making the pebbles dance and jarring her spinning head.

The fog parted under the gust of enormous wings and dark shapes loomed, the sounds of their gurgled hissing like the sulfur geysers of Dragon Country.

The dragons abruptly darted away as from the obscured heavens fell a monstrous foot, the quake of its descent jolting Kayley a foot off the ground. She stared up the ankle, up the leg, but she couldn't see the top of it, like looking up the wall of a mountain. One dragon made a last dive for her and she felt the blast of its breath and saw the black linking of its mouth before it was caught in the huge fist and whisked squalling out of sight into the mist-choked sky. Its cries were cut off by the crunching of bones, and chunks of scaly flesh and acidic gore rained down onto the dirt.

The foot began to lift and Kayley leapt for it, fingers hooking into the crevices of the stone-like hide, and held on. The dragons grabbed at her with claws and teeth and she pressed herself flat as the breezes of their passing whipped her garments, muscles aching against the strain, nails tearing and sending thorns of pain up her fingers. The ogre's fist swung down, batting the dragons aside like a horse's tail swatting flies.

A shift in the massive body signaled the ogre changing direction, the stomach-rolling motions of its leg lifting her up high and slamming back down with world-shaking force, turning back the way it had come to pursue the fleeing dragons, its hunger rekindled. She squinted until the green of the trees bloomed into sight below and, gathering a breath, let herself drop.

She fell, down, down, through the shrieking wind into the trees, into the cradle of branches passing her roughly down, raking at her, tearing her clothes and face. She caught a hold on a solid branch, gasping at the burn of her pulled muscles, but held on and swung off it onto the ground. Her feet hit dirt and she collapsed.

For a while she could only lay there, fallen leaves settling around her. Then she began to drag herself back towards the spring.

The way back seemed to take ages, her muscles rust-stiff and every part of her sore. The gash across her back from the dragon's claws seeped steadily and she kept a nervous eye out, fearing the smell of blood would attract predators. The air had cooled and the sky was dark by the time she returned, hauled herself into the shade of the cave to the edge of the pool and plunged her hands into the water, gulping greedily and dousing her face.

The griffin's voice slithered, "Back so soon?" and she looked up painfully to see him lounging on the high arch of a root, his feathers and coat fully re-grown and magnificent, the violet undersides of his wings like those of some tropical insect. Wind-ruffled from recent flight, his eyes still glazed with the protective membrane used to shield against the talons of the birds that were part of a griffin's diet. The leg of a wild hawk dangled from his beak.

Kayley couldn't draw enough breath to speak. Her head flopped over the edge of the pond and she lay motionless. The griffin swallowed his meal in a creak of tiny bones, then tossed a plucked branch of purple leaves down to her.

000

Water lapped placidly at Kayley's feet as she sat on the bank, head resting on her bent knees. A dull itch crept over the newly-healed skin of her back. She ached everywhere. Her thoughts wrestled in her mind like dogs over a scrap of meat, finding no answer.

A rustle in the bush. Kayley looked up, and her breath caught as two wolves loped out. From this close, their sharp muzzles and lean forms lent a stronger resemblance to overlarge foxes than wolves, grassy coats dappled in the shade off the moonlit leaves.

The wolves ventured to the water to drink, and one looked at her. Then it slunk fearlessly toward her. The griffin raised his head from his perch but made no move, meaning either she had no reason to fear or he just didn't care. Kayley held still as stone as the wolf came nearer, her heart beating a cannonade, until she could feel the breath from its quivering nose against her knee. But it only sniffed at her before trotting back to its companion, and they vanished again into the undergrowth.

Kayley stared after them. Then she looked around at the clearing. Heard the trickle of water, the chatter of the nightlife. And it dawned on her.

_Who fights for _them?

She held a lock of her hair between her fingers, stared at the faint, ruby plant dye that still clung to it. It reminded her of the red hair that had trailed from the scalp of the skeleton in the forest.

Red hair.

Red, like Ruber's had been.

Something that had been nagging at her clicked into place.

The griffin had fallen asleep, draped over the root with his long tail dangling. She called up to him and he stirred, cracked one eye. "I've got a plan," she said.

He closed it again.

His nonchalance staggered her. "Don't you even _care?_"

"What do you think _I_ can do?"

"I need your help."

"Not likely."

"Right now, this is bigger than both of us. This is everything at stake."

"You sound enthused."

"I'm _not_. This will destroy all of Camelot. Everyone."

"The horror," he said placidly.

If she'd had a rock she would have thrown it at him. "I need your help. I need you to take me to Ruber's father."

The griffin purred without warmth. "And what do you intend? To take home his head for your mantel?"

"You spent too much time with Ruber."

"As if I needed reminding."

"I think…" She thought again of the skeletons. "I think his daughter is dead."

He squeezed his eyes shut to the point of pain. "Lovely."

"This forest is probably the last safe place for beasts like you. What happens when it's destroyed?"

"Humans destroy everything eventually. Even this place won't stand against them forever."

_Well, you're optimistic._ "So you'd rather lay here and wait for the dragons' fires to sweep over you?" He didn't answer and she sighed, too tired to force any kind of wheedling note. "I just need your help this once."

It was the line that had won Garrett over, when she'd been just an annoying intrusion into his solitude, and the sooner he helped her the sooner she would be out of his hair. The situation wasn't so dissimilar.

Still the griffin didn't budge.

"You do owe me," she said.

His eyes grew thin and bright as sun-sparked steel. For a fear-taut second she thought he would swoop down and gobble her up himself, but he only hissed and turned away.

"_Fine_," she snapped. She was on her own.

She ate a bit of the dry fruit, looked around for something that might have served as a weapon but found nothing. Every movement brought a creaking complaint, not just the bruises from her recent scuffle but from before, the wounds she still carried from Ruber and her first journey through the forest. But she shunted her weakness aside and turned back toward Dragon Country.

Barely had she stepped outside of the cave before a heavy presence alighted on the path behind her. She whirled.

The griffin stood there, glowering. "This will make us even," he growled.

Despite herself, her heart lightened. "Of course."


	6. Chapter 6

Sorry for the long wait.

* * *

The griffin sneezed.

"Bless you," Kayley muttered before covering her own mouth and stepping into the hovel.

The skeletons still lay twisted together on the dirt floor. Kayley swallowed her squeamishness and knelt, gingerly poking through them, not quite sure what she was looking for. Corpsedust clung to the blood that had dried under her torn nails.

From beneath the musty heaps of rags and bones, something glinted. A bracelet, still on the fleshless wrist. Though she used the utmost care as she worked it free, the fragile bone still cracked at the disturbance and she jerked back in disgust.

_Stop that._ _Knights don't get sick over such things._

The bracelet was made of gold, dulled by time and carved masterfully into the shape of a dragon devouring its own tail. On the inside was an inscription, but in a language she couldn't read. "Does this look familiar to you?" she asked the griffin.

The griffin reached into the feathers of his breast and pulled out a monocle, of all things, which he affixed to his eye to inspect the bracelet before nodding. They moved away, and Kayley looked back once at the shack. The only tomb that woman and her child would ever have. "What was her name?"

"I never knew."

"Oh. And… Ruber's father, what's _his _name?"

"I don't know."

"_What? _You mean to tell me-!"

"Naming is a human concept. It doesn't concern me."

"The native dragons have names. And so do-"

"Because they're fools who wish to be human."

She said nothing for a while. Then, "My name is Kayley."

"Hmph."

A second stop, this time at the remains of the dragon that had nearly snatched Kayley. The wolves and other beasts had been at it, had gnawed it bare; all that remained were the vast bones tenting rags of scaley hide. Kayley broke off a long shard from one of its fangs, which she concealed beneath her clothing.

She just had to keep going, before common sense caught up and smote her with the reality of what she was doing.

As they walked, she talked with the griffin, needing to keep her fears at bay with words. It was not a trait that had endeared her to Garrett on their first meeting either, but she couldn't help it.

"Were you there when Ruber's sister ran away?"

"I was. I watched from the mountaintop as she fled."

"Was she pregnant then?"

"Yes. But it didn't slow her any."

"So her father never saw the baby." It wasn't a question, and she broke away from him to where a cluster of the nectar-rich flowerbuds hung. At her touch one obligingly released a downpour of its contents, and she caught a splash in her cupped hands and rubbed it through her hair. She checked her reflection in a stream, satisfied to see her brown tresses red as fresh blood. "Well?" she asked the griffin. "How do I look?"

"You don't want me to answer that," he said.

He seemed to have realized what she planned, and they went on in silence until he muttered, "You know you're walking right into your death."

"If you've got a better idea, let's hear it," Kayley snapped.

A few wolves appeared and watched them from a distance, but were gone by the time the eye-leaking stench and yellow-green vapors of Dragon Country reached them. Kayley covered her mouth with her sleeve and the griffin sealed his eyes against the stinging gases. They had barely stepped onto the cracked earth when two black dragons landed down onto the path before them. Kayley went forward to meet them, and felt their eyes raking her to the bone. Would they know she wasn't who they sought? Was this over before it had even started? But she kept her back straight and let them stare, and at last they looked from her to the griffin behind her.

"He goes where I go," Kayley told them firmly.

One dragon lowered its belly to the ground as if bowing, and she understood that she was to climb on. Using the base of its wing as a foothold, she swung her leg up over the broad back as if mounting a horse. The sharp chafe of its scales against her inner thighs nearly made her cry out, but she bit her lip and sat steady as the giant wings churned and lifted off.

The dragon rose to a stomach-twisting height, and she looked over the side of it to see the misty ground dizzyingly far below. The wind whipped her dye-thickened hair in her eyes but she dared not let go even to swat it back. The griffin followed close behind.

As Kayley squinted, the great spires of the area's mountains became visible, piercing through the mists, and she realized that was their destination. The dragon climbed higher into the air, as did her nausea, until she had to shut her eyes and didn't open them again until she felt the lurch of impact as the dragon landed. It touched its belly to the ground so that she could slide off, her stomach still rolling and pain shooting through her cramped muscles as her feet touched down.

They had landed on a ledge of the mountainside that opened into a deep passageway, large enough for two black dragons to enter abreast.

She thought of her mother, of Garrett and country, and stepped inside.

The hot, smoky reek of dragon choked the passage. A thousand crimson eyes flickered in the dark. Kayley tried to keep her gaze set ahead, her head high, heart pounding against her ribs as if wanting to break free. The griffin's claws scraped against rock behind her.

The end of the tunnel loomed, opening into a cavernous room. A series of torches along the walls threw the interior into shadow-pooled relief.

Against the far wall, a man sat on a throne carved from rock. The dragons bowed out of the way as he rose and stepped into the ruddy light, and Kayley took an unthinking step back into the griffin.

_Ruber._

No, not Ruber. But it could have been him. The receding blaze of red hair, the eyebrows that grew in a single stripe, the boulder-thick shoulders and deep chest. But there were streaks of swordsteel-gray in his hair, ravines of age chiseled above the brow, and where Ruber's eyes had been lit from within by infernos of madness, this man's gaze was cool and serene as an ice-skinned lake.

Kayley could feel the griffin's heart hammering madly against her spine.

She remembered herself and forced the word. "Grandfather."

The red-haired man did not take another step. Her wrist snapped up, flashing the dragon-shaped band. "This was my mother's."

Massive arms flung around her before she could react, trapping her in a rib-snapping embrace that crushed the air from her lungs.

"My dear child," he whispered in her ear. "You've come home."

He let her go and stepped back, his huge hands on her shoulders. Every angle, every detail of his face so like Ruber's that she couldn't breathe. His pale eyes drilled into hers. Seeing through her disguise?

He touched her face, the huge palm rough, filthy nails scratching gently over her skin. Her palms sweated for the makeshift knife hidden in her tunic.

The king looked to the griffin. "And my son's beast?"

Kayley put her hand up on the feathered shoulder, needing something to protect, to rip her focus from her own terror. "He's with me." The griffin bowed his head in subservience.

The king's hand touched her back, ushering her forward. "Come," he said. "I imagine you have many questions."

0000

Garrett knelt on the loamy soil and investigated the fresh human tracks with his fingers. Kayley. It had to be. He stood up again, his stick tapping out a well-remembered route ahead of him. The familiar, musical racket of the forest branched over him into a mental picture he could navigate easily.

"Didn't think we'd be back here so soon," muttered Cornwall, looking uneasily around as he and his brother puffed along behind, sometimes flapping, sometimes walking, wings and tempers exhausted.

"I still say we should stop and ask someone. A wolf, perhaps-" Devon started to say, but Cornwall cut him off with a scoff.

"A _wolf?_ Here, I'll save ya the trouble." Cornwall bulged his eyes and lolled his tongue doggishly. "_Wuff gruff grr beef grrr mutton lambchops grrr_…"

"_Really,_ Cornwall-!"

"Quiet, you two!" Garrett snapped. His mind chewed itself. _I don't get it, why would she come back here…?_

With a shrill squawk, Ayden spiraled down from the heights above the treetops and perched onto Garrett's shoulder. Garrett didn't need the hawk's chittered warning, he could smell it already.

Dragon Country.

When they heard the sulfur, hissing like a nest of snakes, the two-headed dragon stopped. "Wait," said Cornwall, trying to back up, "wait, we can't-" But Devon pushed their shared body forward, "We can, and we will!" Cornwall could only go along.

Garrett heard the warning screech of the hawk and leaped backwards just as a blast of flame tore apart the ground where he had stood, the heat searing his face. He heard the flap of scaled wings and the deep thrum of a dragon drawing breath to aim again, before Cornwall and Devon seized him and threw him onto their back, dragon fire snapping up the earth after them as they beat their wings with all their might until finally they stopped, so suddenly that he was flung off and landed hard onto the dirt. Gasping, smelling smoke and sweat, he struck the earth hard with his fist. "Damn!"

Cornwall and Devon were hopping from foot to foot, trying to fan their scorched tail. "You see?" spat Cornwall, furious and hurt. "I knew somethin' like this would happen!"

"Right," grumbled Garrett, getting back up. "Right, the banishing thing."

"I think this goes beyond that," Devon said suddenly. Before Cornwall could question him, Devon took their body into flight again, rising to peer into the distance where the dark shapes of the bigger dragons circled over the desert.

They landed back down. "I think they're guarding the place." said Devon. "Whatever's going on, they don't want us snooping about. Us, or anyone."

"I don't get it," said Cornwall. "I mean, they were always territorial, but _this_-"

"We can't just stand here! If Kayley-" Garrett stopped, a terrible thought swooping over him. "No…You don't think she…"

Cornwall and Devon had to restrain him from running right back to the site of their narrow escape. He struggled like a madman in their grip and Cornwall cried, "Easy, loverboy! You're no good to her dead."

Garrett ceased fighting and they let him go. His teeth ground in helpless rage. What if Kayley had gone in? What if the dragons had…?

_No…no…_

"Maybe…maybe she went around…."

Devon's voice trembled. "There is no way around. Surely you know that."

Cornwall tried to sound reassuring. "Hey, I'm sure Kayley's fine. She can take care of herself," But Garrett wasn't listening, the blood pounding in his ears.

"We'll keep looking. But I have to know if she's in there," he said. He felt the gentle squeeze of talons on his forearm, and lifted the hawk above his head.

"Ayden, we're counting on you."

Ayden pushed off, disappearing in a flash of silver.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**Also, the amazing and talented MistressCat on Deviantart has drawn some wonderful fanart for this story. Check it out (without the spaces) at mistresscat. deviantart. com / gallery / ?q = kayley # / d3ikoxd**

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**I regret to announce that I am discontinuing "Greenwolves' Keep." I always meant to go back to it, but now I don't think that will ever happen. Looking back, the whole story was really poorly thought out, and what I had planned for the rest of it was just a mess. There were a lot of things that changed while I was writing the story and so it I just lost control over it. For example, the title now seems strange to me because the wolves were originally going to have a bigger role.**

**I did have the ending planned, so here are the events that lead up to it:**

**Ayden managed to get to Kayley but she, fearing that the dragons would kill Garret if he came, told Ayden not to tell anyone that he had found her. Either that, or the griffin would chase Ayden away before he could get to Kayley.**

**Ruber's father (I never even gave him a name) was going to inform Kayley (still thinking she was his granddaughter) that she had been the product of an incestuous union which he had forced between Ruber and his sister (hence why the sister had later run away), as there had been no other means of producing a pureblooded heir, and he intended for Kayley to make "a similar sacrifice" and impregnate her with his child before sending her back to his old lands with the dragons so that his reign could begin again. Terrified by the idea, Kayley managed to keep her cool and bought herself a little time first to figure out how she was going to keep the king from sending his dragons to destroy the land, which he planned to do after sending her off, because he had lost everything when he came to Camelot and wanted to burn it all down. He had refrained from doing so for so long in the hopes that Ruber would take it over, but with that hope gone, all bets were off. Yes, Ruber's father was a really sick guy. (There was a point where, after meeting the father, Kayley thought she could understand how Ruber had turned out the way he did.) I never really figured out how it was that he was able to control the dragons, but the rough idea was that it was through some kind of enchanted stone that was planted in his chest beside the heart, which he planned to give to Kayley once her pregnancy was certain.**

**By the way, the reason that I came up with as to why Ruber did not use his father's army of dragons to take over Camelot was because, even when controlled by a spell, the dragons are unstable weapons and would likely have destroyed the entire land, whereas Ruber wanted something left standing for himself to rule over, so he rebelled against his father and tried it his own way.**

**To break the king's control over the dragons, Kayley had to destroy the stone in his chest, but the problem was that when she did that, the loss of the spell that had held the dragons captive for so long would have sent them into a temporary frenzy that would have destroyed much of Camelot. She figured that the only way to keep them from going on a rampage was to trap them within the mountain, but in order to do that she would have to keep the king there. Sensing their master in trouble, they would rush into the mountain to his aid, but once the spell was broken they would go crazy.**

**Kubi was going to make another appearance by popping up out of the tunnels that ran beneath the mountain, and offered Kayley a means of escape through the tunnels. Kayley declined, knowing that she would have to keep the king within the mountain long enough for the dragons to snap out of their confusion and kill him, and when that happened she would be killed as well. The griffin thought she was being stupid, but she told him that her father had been prepared to give his life for Camelot and so was she, leaving the griffin grudgingly impressed by her courage, though he informed her that he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself for her cause. She told the griffin to take the tunnels, saying that he had done enough and that she wanted him to live. Insert goodbye here where she tried to pet him for the first time and he flinched away.**

**Kayley somehow tricked the king (maybe in pretending to agree to his terms) and managed to stab him in the chest. And then...**

Kayley staggered as the swords met in a scream of steel, shockwaves coursing up her arms. Even old, the king was ten times the swordsman she would ever be, and it was all she could do to keep him at bay. The blood bloomed black over his filthy shirtfront and bubbled from a corner of his mouth, but his eyes were red with wrath and he was beyond pain, beyond reason.

Kayley swung and parried but he drove her relentlessly back. The sword so heavy in her hands, hands that had never wielded anything mightier than a pitchfork. Muscles screaming, eyes stung by sparks and sweat, she was distantly aware of the patter of debris on her shoulders and hair as, above, the dragons swarmed to the ceiling of the hollow mountain, a bottled storm of flailing wings and green fire. Their heavy, thrashing bodies battered against the ancient walls so that the entire structure shuddered as though wracked by an earthquake. Reeling in the loss of the link with their king, but not for long.

The mountain trembled around her, coming apart. Great chunks of stone rained down, the air choked with dust. The ground bucked and pitched Kayley off her feet, knocking her flat. Through a swirl of stars she saw the king's sword glint and she rolled, the keen blade sparking off the rocks rather than her neck, and lashed out with a sweeping kick. It was like striking her shins against solid oak, but his balance was shaken by the tremors and he went down.

Above, the dragons' confusion was dying down. Soon they would strike.

_Garret. I'm sorry. _

A bestial shriek split the air as the griffin burst up out of the ground and shot straight into the eye of the living storm high above. Smaller and faster than the panicked dragons, he wove through the chaos of them, bared talons slashing open their scaled underbellies, slimy green blood and heavy ropes of intestines spilling free and falling with heavy wet slaps to the rocks below. The hot, sulfuric gases that filled their bellies to enable flight hissed out in an acid-yellow fog, and the dragons roared as it burned their eyes and rendered them blind, the snaps and swipes aimed at their attacker ripping into one another instead. But the griffin's eyes were sealed and he refused to relent.

The ground split open, great cracks racing through the earth. Dazed, the breath half knocked out of her, Kayley tried to scramble to her feet, tried to run. A gust of wing-kicked wind swept over her, and then her arms were seized in mighty talons, snatching her up. She twisted in the grip, clutching handfuls of the griffin's black feathers as she climbed up onto his back. She pressed herself flat, taut muscle pounding beneath her as his immense wings beat, her stomach lurching as he dived and braked, dodging great chunks of falling rock. Dragon fire scorched the air and embers sprayed her face.

She looked back.

She saw the king, his back to her, blade still in his hand. Saw the remaining dragons, their black scales slicked green with the blood of their wingmates, gathered and looming over him. The madness gone, the cold vengeance in their eyes impaling him where he stood.

He lifted his sword.

As one, the dragons pounced.

Then the sight was lost as the griffin dived into a tunnel, a feeble speck of light barely visible through the falling rocks and dust. The heat of dragon fire licked at her back. Kayley closed her eyes…

And opened them again as fresh, icy air washed over her face, filled her lungs. The night sky. The moon.

Behind them, the mountain collapsed in a fount of green flame.

000

Barely conscious, Kayley lay like a sack of grain on the griffin's back, aware of nothing the rough pelt against her ribs. When his talons touched down onto the grass of the forest spring, she slid off onto the ground and lay there, hollow with exhaustion.

With an effort she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled to the pool, where she stripped off her ragged, stinking garments and eased herself into the water alongside the griffin. The clear water turned black and then bloody with the ash and dirt and plant dye that washed from her skin and hair. Her shoulder was stiff, and only when she finally noticed the deep slash there, gazed by the king's sword when it had swung for her throat, did she begin to feel the pain.

Climbing out, she plucked healing leaves from the bushes and tended to herself and the griffin, and then curled up against him as he lay down to rest. The grass was cold but her bare flesh soaked up the warmth of his fur, his heavy wings tucked over her.

Some time in the night, a vague dread stirred Kayley, and she opened her eyes to see the dark shapes of the dragons against the stars. "They're only going home," the griffin's hoarse voice murmured, somewhere, and sleep smothered her once more.

000

Morning came, fingers of sunlight creeping down through the trees to pry at her closed eyelids, and she lifted her head reluctantly, painfully from the sun-warmed fur of her companion. She bathed again, scrubbed her clothes in the water as best she could, then dressed and looked at her reflection in the pool while she raked the last of the red dye from her hair with her fingernails. She picked a few more leaves and shared them with the griffin, chewing them, letting their magic nourish them and restore their energy.

Sunlight skipped playfully off the surface of the pool. Willow branches whispered in the breeze. Kayley drank in every detail, seeing nothing beyond the beauty of being alive.

The griffin escorted her to the end of the woods. Along the way she saw flashes of grass-colored fur through the trees, but the wolves did not follow them for long.

At the end of the forest, he still beneath the shade of the trees and she outside on the path, they stopped and stood in silence. She reached to touch him and, this time, he didn't flinch away, his poison-green eyes drawing half-shut as she stroked his great head, his ears and the impossibly soft feathers beneath his eyes. Then she kissed him on the brow. She hadn't taken ten steps before she looked back, watching as he vanished into the forest.

Following forgotten roads, the salt scent of the ocean and the mewling of sea gulls told her home was near. The hills of her family's land bobbed up into her view like the waves of the sea and she broke into a run.

Garrett was the first one to reach her, tossing his stick aside, his gray eyes alight with joy. She threw herself at him without stopping and knocked them both back onto the dirt, his relieved laughter –the most beautiful sound in the world to her— in her ear as she buried her face in the shoulder of his tunic and inhaled his scent. Then Cornwall and Devon pulled her away, crushing her to their scaled belly and swinging her around, both heads whooping for joy at once. Her mother hugged her fiercely, then thrust her back to arm's length. "Kayley, where in the world have you been? We were all worried sick!"

Kayley shrank slightly from her mother's glare and looked at the faces watching her. She saw the sleepless rings beneath their eyes, the ravages of fear. Guilt sank in her stomach, but when she opened her mouth no words would rise. The truth was too big, too raw. They would never believe her. She hardly believed it herself.

"I…" She lowered head so that no one would see her eyes darting around for a distraction. "I needed…some time to think, to clear my head…"

"Kayley!" Her mother, her strong, composed mother, was sputtering. "You've been gone for five days! What could you possibly have needed to… to _think_ on for all that time?"

Kayley's eyes landed on Garrett. Garrett, who she had thought she would never see again. Whirling on him, she seized his hands in hers and cried, "Garrett, will you marry me?"

000

Kayley couldn't sleep.

She sat up in her bed, tucking her knees to her chest and hugging herself against the chill. She listened to the creaking of the house, and the soft snoring rising from the other side of the bed. Quietly, careful not to wake her newly betrothed and fellow knight sleeping beside her, she slipped out of bed and dressed and went out.

The hissing of the ocean reminded her of the cheering from earlier that day, rising around her within the sun-washed room of the Round Table as she had knelt for the kiss of the King's blade upon her shoulder. She had worn white, the silks her mother had intended for her wedding because it was the only dress she owned, and it was fitting in a way because it _was_ a marriage. A marriage to the state, to the duty that her she had always dreamed would be hers.

As she had crossed the floor, every step bringing twinges of pain that she must pretend did not exist, she had glanced from the corners of her eyes at the gathered civilians and knights cheering her name. Beneath their show of joy she had caught winces of distrust, of unease, even anger. A woman and a blind man, _knights_. It was to be expected, despite all that she and Garrett had done (indeed, in a week she had done more for the kingdom than any of them probably ever would in a lifetime). This was only the beginning; there was still so much ahead. Training, battles, harder work than she had ever known. They would have to prove themselves time and time again. But they would do it.

The sea pawed at the rocks below her. She sat on the edge of the grassy cliff, and gazed out over the waters until dawn.

**And that's that. Sorry,** **Garrett fangirls, that he didn't have a larger role, but I wanted this to be something that** **Kayley** **had to do herself. (Yes, the griffin did save her, but she saved the kingdom.) I hope Kayley's proposal was enough to satisfy.**


	8. Chapter 8

**BONUS! Scenes from the sequel that will never be, just for you!**

Kayley woke up to a commotion outside.

Sitting up in bed, she looked out her window to see a familiar hulking, winged shape alighting onto her lawn. The entire household was already there, armed with pitchforks and anything else that could serve as a weapon, advancing toward him haltingly as though unsure whether to charge or run and hide. Garret, Cornwall and Devon were running fearlessly to the forefront, and Kayley could see the two-headed dragon's chest swelling to unleash a blast of fire.

She thrust her head out the window and screamed with all her might, "_STOP!"_

Her shout was so piercing that everyone stopped. Cornwall and Devon tripped over their own feet and landed face-first onto the grass. Kayley leaped out the window in a graceful tangle of white, and ran. Past the astonished farm hands, she sprinted to the griffin's side and pressed herself to his shoulder. "It's all right!"

The griffin, knowing a good show was needed, rubbed his head against Kayley like a faithful pet as she stroked him. "See?" She addressed their startled stares, "it's all right."

Jaw slack, Cornwall whispered something a confused Garrett, whose face twisted in disbelief. Juliana was the first to break through the shock and stepped forward with a cloak to cover her daughter's nightgown-clad body, apparently more concerned by Kayley's immodesty than the griffin.

Kayley forgot them all for a moment, stroking the griffin. Her hand found a damp patch of his feathers, and her fingers came away wet and red. She bent and saw that his foreleg, too, was muddied with blood. Her stomach plummeted. "You're hurt? Not again…"

She led him gently away, leaving the assembled household in stunned silence.

000

Cornwall glared over at the griffin. "I don't get it," he muttered, watching as Kayley knelt beside the winged creature and stroked his fur. "What's that big ugly featherbag got that we don't?"

Devon began to sing in a quavering but melodic tone, "Tale as old as tiiiiiiime, song as old as rhyyyyyyyyme…" until Cornwall grabbed him by the muzzle and growled, "_Don't."_

000

"Hey, buddy."

The griffin stiffened as a familiar, two-headed dragon moved close to his side, both heads wearing similar expressions of scornful mistrust.

"If we could have a word." Devon's tone was terse but polite, while Cornwall growled through his teeth. "Yeah, we got somethin' to discuss."

"It has come to our attention that _our_ lovely young lady seems to rather… like you."

"But _we_ don't."

"And thus, should any harm from you befall a single hair of dear Kayley's head…"

Cornwall leaned closer, smoke coiling from his nostrils, and jabbed a claw into the griffin's face. "Then we know what's for dinner, got it?"

The fur stood up along the griffin's shoulders, but his voice was cool. "Really. And how will I be cooked?"

"Roasted," snarled Cornwall. "Burnt to a crunchy, crispy—"

"No, no, no." Devon shook his long head. "Medium rare, with a soft pink inside and a garnish of—"

"Roasted!'

"Medium well!"

"_Roasted!'_

"_Medium well!"_

"Just because you haven't the faintest sense of good taste—!"

"Just 'cause _you_ wouldn't know good cookin' if it waltzed up and bit ya on the tail—!"

The smoke withered up from their nostrils as they continued yelling, and began whacking one another on the head. Chuckling to himself, the griffin slunk back into the barn.

**That was as far as I got for ideas for a sequel, which sadly died with the story. It's probably for the best, as I never got further than the griffin returning, and seeing him interact with Devon and Cornwall (which would have been a lot of fun).**

**So there you have it. Thank you so, so much to everyone who read and reviewed!**


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